


moths drawn to a flame

by cosimamanning



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Emotional Attachment to Taking Your Coffee Black, F/F, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Implied/Referenced Suicide attempt, Mental Health Issues, Minor Character Death, You can feel your soulmate's pain, with a happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-30
Updated: 2017-06-30
Packaged: 2018-11-21 08:51:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11354034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosimamanning/pseuds/cosimamanning
Summary: It’s so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.”–John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our DiscontentShe experiences life feeling pain that isn't her's, searching for someone who completes her.





	moths drawn to a flame

**Author's Note:**

> Read the tags for some warnings, but they're pretty canonical with Sarah and Beth's storylines, and referenced mostly vaguely leading up to Beth's attempt, but I just want everyone to be safe!

Beth’s father says she learns to run before she learns how to walk.

Always on the move, little feet taking her wherever they can, tiny body filled with joy and laughter as she dashes behind coffee tables and out of the way of chasing hands. Sometimes she stumbles, nobbly knees skidding across smooth wooden floors or grassy fields or pebble-filled sidewalks, but she never cries, too focused on the desire to _move_ to busy herself with tears.

One day, there’s a sharp pain in her wrist, burning and bright, one she can’t ignore, and Beth cries, loud and wailing. Her mother and father come rushing to her, doting an attentive. Beth’s father is a cop, over-protective to a fault, and her mother is a doctor, gentle and kind and everything in the world that is good.

Her wrist is fine.

Somewhere, in the world, someone else’s wrist is broken.

She’s too young to understand, but it’s the first time that Beth cries for a soulmate that she doesn’t know.

(It won’t be the last.)

* * *

 

As time passes, she learns to differentiate _her_ pain with _their_ pain.

(She still doesn’t know who they are, what their name is, or anything about them, but she’s old enough to understand that _they_ exist. Her other half.)

She’s annoyed, at first, at the almost constant pain, the aches in her muscles where there must be bruises, the sharp jolts where bones break, because why does she have to be stuck with a soulmate that’s so clumsy? When she’s six, she sees her father, bags under his eyes, whispering with her mother, voice low when he thinks Beth can’t hear.

 _Abuse_ echoes through Beth’s mind, over and over, and suddenly she’s not annoyed anymore. She’s scared.

“Dad?” she asks, voice small, crawling onto his lap as she hasn’t done in a while. “How can we help them?”

He looks tired and old beyond his years as he rubs at his eyes, trying to come up with some sort of answer. Beth watches enough tv to know that some people hire private investigators to find their soulmates, but she knows, deep down, that they don’t know enough about her soulmate. They could be anyone, anywhere.

But they’re _hurting_ , and Beth wants to help.

(This isn’t something she can run from.)

“I don’t know, sweetpea,” he tells her, truthfully, and Beth is angry at the universe, for a moment. When her mother hits her hip on the kitchen counter in her hurry, her father rubs at his own from where he paces in the living room, and he knows to handle her hurts softly when they touch.

All Beth can do is sit, tears streaming down her cheeks silently as the sting of someone else’s pain courses through her veins, unable to kiss away sores or mend broken bones, and she’s so small but she feels so _helpless_.

Desperate to do something, _anything_ , she squeezes her right hand with her left as hard as she can, trying to communicate.

 _You’re not alone_ , she wants to say, _I’m here_.

Beth feels a small, answering pressure in her left hand, and she smiles.

* * *

 

When Beth is eight, there’s a sharp, stinging pain to her head that disorients her so much that she stumbles in the middle of her junior track meet and falls to the ground, crumbling over herself.

She sprains her own ankle, but as her vision goes hazy and she hears her parents yelling her name frantically in the background, all she can think is _please be okay, please be okay, please be okay._

When Beth wakes up, there’s a splint around her ankle, and a dull throbbing in her head that she thinks is her own, because when she’d fallen she’d taken quite the tumble, and her parents hover over her, as concerned as ever.

“Are you okay?” her father asks her, and Beth nods, but she’s frowning. She’s okay, but somewhere, someone else isn’t. Her mother, however, mistakes the frown for something else entirely.

“You’ll be able to run again in no time,” she reassures, “your coach knows that your soulmate has a habit of getting into… accidents.” The word feels heavy on her mother’s tongue, stilted, _forced_ . Her father looks to the ground and her mother looks guilty and Beth wants to yell accusations at them, because they all know that hurts this frequent cannot be mere _accidents_.

Beth’s mother is a doctor and Beth’s father is a cop and they’re all too smart to try and pretend otherwise, even if Beth is only eight.

It takes her a while to notice, but the only pain she feels is her own. After so long of having pain that isn’t her’s constantly coursing through her body, Beth panics.

She sneaks away to her father’s laptop in the middle of the night when her parents are sleeping, and they discover her in the morning, crying, over a search history of ‘ _how do you know if your soulmate is dead’_ . They’re firm believers in letting matches find each other naturally over the course of time, because what’s destined to be will _be_ , as the stars have designed, but Beth thinks this is the closest they’ve ever come to bending.

“They’re alright,” her father attempts to reassure her, rocking Beth back and forth across his chest, “they’re alright.”

Beth doesn’t let her breathing even out, left hand tightly gripping her right, until she feels a tentative answering squeeze to her left.

 _Don’t leave me_ , she cries out silently to the universe, _I need you_.

The pressure in her palm isn’t a promise, but, for the moment, it’s enough.

* * *

 

After that, the pain lessens and becomes more sporadic, and Beth’s heart soars, because she hopes that this means that her soulmate has finally found a home that offers her a fraction of the love they deserve. Beth doesn’t know them, probably won’t know them for many years, but wants nothing more than to wrap them in her arms and tell them that everything will be alright, and that she’ll protect them.

Her mother is a doctor and her father is a cop and Beth’s always had a protective instinct but her soulmate coaxes it out in her. She wants to _help_ people, to _heal_ them, to prevent the innocent from being preyed on by those more powerful than they.

(Her mother rubs at her eyes when Beth announces, proudly, at age ten, that she wants to go to the police academy when she grows up. Her father cheers and offers her a sip out of his coffee mug.)

Beth grows into herself, gangly limbs stretching, her body taking shape in ways she wasn’t expecting, and she smiles as lean muscle forms, always running, always striving towards some greater goal. Any time she falls or scrapes her knees or busts her shins, there’s a soft, reassuring pressure at her left hand, and she knows that her soulmate worries about her, too.

 _There’s nothing for you to worry about_ , she wants to tell them, stretching out before a track meet, wishing, not for the first time, that she knew who _they_ were, so that she could know them, could meet them, could bring them here, have them cheer her on as she ran, _just worry about yourself._

Her soulmate might have found a better home, but Beth thinks they just have a talent for finding trouble. There’s nothing as serious as broken bones anymore, but scratches and scrapes are frequent, as well as quite a few bumps and bruises.

“They might just be clumsy,” her father suggests, and Beth shrugs, but she can’t shake the feeling that her soulmate is up to something that might get them in trouble.

 _Be careful,_ she wills, squeezing onto her right hand tightly, for no reason other than to let them know that she’s still there, still worrying about them, still waiting.

 _Don’t worry_ , the answering pressure seems to say, but that’s all Beth seems to do when it comes to them.

When she’s sixteen, in the middle of a thunderstorm, Beth wakes up and tears are streaming down her face for no reason that she can explain, and there’s a dull sort of ache in her lower abdomen, and she’s overwhelmed with such a powerful wave of sadness that it threatens to consume her.

Her mother holds her, stroking her hair as Beth hiccups into her chest, and Beth looks at her, pleading for some sort of explanation.

“Sometimes,” her mother says, very softly, “the pain that you feel from your soulmate isn’t physical. If they experience particularly strong emotional pain, sometimes you can feel that, too.”

Beth wonders what it is that’s caused her person to hurt this much, but it makes her ache, because they’ve already endured so much, and she just wants to take a little bit of the hurt away from them. She’d do anything to help alleviate the pain, just for awhile.

She squeezes her right hand tightly, but doesn’t get a response.

(She isn’t expecting one, but keeps squeezing all the same.)

 _I’m here_ , she says to the universe, _I’m not leaving you, I promise. I won’t ever leave you. I’ll keep you safe._

There’s a dull throb in her chest that lasts for the next month, and Beth squeezes on her right hand more frequently than she usually does, trying to show her person that she’s there, that they aren’t alone.

(The hurts start coming again, with less time in-between, and Beth thinks that maybe this is her soulmate’s way of punishing themselves. That maybe they don’t think they’re deserving of goodness, of love. She’s read articles on the internet about the mentality of abuse survivors, and how oftentimes they believe that they’re worth less, and become stuck in a cycle of abuse in their own twisted version of self-loathing. It breaks Beth’s heart.)

 _You deserve happiness_ , Beth wants to scream, grasping onto her hand so tightly that it begins to go numb, tears prickling at her eyes that are entirely her own, _you deserve me._

There’s no answer, but Beth’s mother has always told her that she’s stubborn, a trait she picks up from her father, so she doesn’t give up. She’s made a promise, and a Childs always keeps their promises.

Beth graduates high school, top of her class, and moves on to college with a scholarship, for track, of course. She frames a picture of herself between her mother and father, diploma in hand, and they look so _proud_ of her, wearing her cap and gown, and she wonders if her soulmate has something like this.

(They’ve gotten more reckless as time passes, and Beth has learned to manage the sharp stinging of pain in whatever form it takes, but the prickling at her heart every time is entirely her own.)

Beth’s twenty-two and just entering the police academy after finishing her degree―she’s going to be a detective, she’s going to help people―when she sees her father gets shot.

It’s a normal day, they’re celebrating her admittance, the chief himself had greeted her upon entry, called her Mikey’s girl. He’s telling her about a case they’re in the middle of, about a ring run by some Portuguese drug lord named Pouchy that they never have enough concrete evidence on, who always has too many friends in too many high places, and then there’s crimson blossoming on his chest and a ringing in Beth’s ears.

She applies pressure to the wound completely instinctually as some frantic passerby calls an ambulance, and Beth can feel herself crying but she can’t hear much over the pounding in her ears.

“Sweetpea,” her father says, and his eyes are watery, and Beth just presses harder, “you’re so brave, my brave Beth.” He looks like there’s so much that he wants to say, so many things he has to tell her. “When you find them, hold them tight, and don’t let them go.”

Beth shakes her head, because this isn’t it, he has more time, he has to have more time.

“Tell your mother I love her.” His eyes flutter and his breathing stutters and all Beth can feel is blood, warm and sticky against her hands. “I love you, sweetpea.”

“Dad,” she cries, broken and shaking, “ _no_.”

She presses harder to the wound, checks for a pulse, doesn’t move until her father is pulled from her by the ambulance that arrives, moments too late, always moments too late. They leave her there, shaking and sobbing on a sidewalk stained red.

The world is blurring before her, and Beth can’t _breathe_ , and then suddenly, there’s a firm, grounding pressure on her left hand, and Beth cries even harder.

She calls her mother, goes home to her apartment, showers, wakes up the morning, and goes to the academy.

She’s sent promptly to a therapist, who gives her pills for the trauma, pills for the anxiety, but Beth has her father’s stubborn persistence, and she keeps coming back, and they let her. Beth will be a detective if it kills her, because this is what she was meant to do.

Her partner at the academy, Art, smiles at her kindly, and asks her how she takes her coffee.

Beth’s never liked coffee much, but it only takes her a minute to decide, _black_ , like her father takes it― _took it._

In her first year, she becomes so wrapped up in police procedures and finding a sort of rhythm with Art that thoughts of her soulmate retreat to the back of her mind, and she feels hopelessly guilty about it, but part of the reason Beth’s so inspired to be a detective is because of _them_ , so she can’t bring herself to feel too bad about it. What she’s doing is important, and she knows that if they knew, they would understand.

(On the days where sadness overwhelms her and the pills do nothing to relieve the weight pinning her to her bed, she feels the familiar, reassuring pressure in her left hand, and somehow it makes her feel just a little lighter.)

At twenty-four, in the middle of a shooting range with Art, Beth literally keels over, clutching at her abdomen, screaming bloody murder, alarming all those around her. It takes them a while to figure it out, but Art just laughs and Beth shoots him a murderous glare.

“I guess they weren’t lying when they say childbirth is the most painful thing a person can experience.” He takes her to a clinic, though, where they have painkillers specially made for this, for unwitting partners who aren’t prepared to experience the miracle of childbirth alongside their soulmate.

(Beth’s father hadn’t taken the pills, even after her mother had insisted. He’d said it was the most rewarding pain in the entire world, after Beth was passed from his exhausted mother’s arms into his own. Beth wonders, squeezing her right hand tightly, if her soulmate has sometime to hand her child to―because at least Beth knows they’re a her, now, or at least she assumes―or if she’s doing this alone.)

After the baby, Beth thinks that there isn’t much pain that can phase her, because Art’s right, it really is the most painful thing a person can experience. She can’t bring herself to be annoyed by it, though, because it just means that there’s an extension of her soulmate out there, somewhere, another bright beam of light for the world to soak in.

There’s a year in which there’s relative peace. Beth and Art graduate into the force together, side-by-side as they usually are, and Art starts dating a woman he knows isn’t his soulmate. Beth asks him about it and he shrugs.

“Don’t you ever get tired of waiting?” he asks her.

Beth thinks she could wait forever, but sometimes the loneliness sits so heavily in her chest that it threatens to consume her, and she thinks that her soulmate will understand, when she meets her―because she _will_ meet her, Beth’s too stubborn to not, and god help whoever stands in her way, even if it’s the universe itself.

Paul Dierden is convenient, and comes with a home close to the precinct, and he’s not hard to look at. Beth isn’t sure if she loves him, if she’ll ever love him, if she’s even capable of loving anyone as much as she loves the stranger whose pain she feels every second of every waking moment for as long as she’s been able to remember, but he’s a warm body who staves off the loneliness, and he runs with her.

She can’t shake the feeling, though, that there is something about him that is _wrong_ , clinical. The fact that he comes with only two suitcases of belongings should be a warning, Beth’s a _detective_ , for Christ’s sake, it’s her job to notice these sorts of things, but he’s just _Paul_ , so normal, so she doesn’t think to ask.

They don’t talk about each other’s soulmates, nor the obvious fact that they aren’t each other’s, they just coexist peacefully in their home, Paul’s watchful eyes always on her, and Beth lets herself mistake the clinical observation for affection, thoughts preoccupied with a stranger she fantasizes about meeting.  

Beth and Art work fantastically together, and for all of their potentially dangerous cases, Beth escapes with minor injury. Sometimes her anxiety will quicken, whenever the situation elevates and shots are fired―she’s a _cop_ , she has to learn to deal with this―and then there’s a pressure on her left hand, and Beth breathes, and moves forward.

Her soulmate isn’t as lucky.

The pain starts to come again, like it had when Beth was younger, and she thinks to the articles she’d read about cycles of abuse. Paul wakes her one night, telling her that she was crying. He doesn’t ask her to talk about it, he never does. Beth squeezes her hand tightly as arms that will never feel _right_ hold her, wishing that there was something she could do, that she could help.

 _I’m here!_ she screams. _Come and find me!_

The pain continues, and Beth has to keep living.

She and Art get assigned to the Pouchy case, and all Beth can think of is blossoming crimson on pristinely ironed white button-ups, of sidewalks usually decorated with the vibrancy of street chalked art stained with the inevitability of death.

“You don’t have to do this,” Art tells her, seriously, concern shining bright in his eyes, and Beth’s so grateful that she’s found him, because she doesn’t think there’s a person in the world more sincere than Art, “we can always tell them to assign someone else―”

“No,” Beth shakes her head, setting her jaw, because she has her father’s stubbornness and a cup of coffee the way her father takes it gripped tightly in her right hand, and a familiar, comforting pressure in her left, “I can do this.”

They start gathering a list of contacts, of Pouchy’s minions, and one of the ones that pops up the most frequently is one Victor Schmidt. He’s seedy looking and Beth wonders if one of the requirements for being a drug dealer is that you have to _look_ like a stereotypical drug dealer, and has been arrested dozens of times for possession and distribution, alongside, it seems, counts of aggression and a case of domestic abuse against a Daisy James, but each time he gets out.

The injustice is enough to make Beth’s blood boil.

“Friends in high places, it seems,” Art grumbles, shaking his head, “he fell off the radar a couple of months ago, though, it seems, ran away with a girlfriend or something.” Beth’s mouth twists into a frown, because she doesn’t think that anyone would run away with him _willingly_.

“Shame,” she mutters, “bet if we followed him, we’d find our way straight to Pouchy.”

Art smiles at her sadly, half-shrugging.

“Wishful thinking.”

Beth works herself to the bone on the Pouchy case, because the image of her father’s face, the life draining out of him on a sidewalk, haunts her in her sleep. She wakes up crying most nights, finds Paul staring at her sadly, almost, pity clear in his gaze, and she rolls over so she doesn’t have to look at him. She didn’t ask for his pity, for his too-observant looks, the way his eyes narrow almost clinically as she swallows the pills prescribed to her by psychiatrist after psychiatrist.

Paul was meant to be something to make her life seem more normal, make things simpler, lessen the loneliness steadily creeping up on her, but she can’t help but feel that he’s a parasite slowly leeching the life from her, bleeding her dry like the crimson blood blooming from her father’s chest on the sidewalk.

Her life doesn’t get simpler.

Of course it doesn’t.

Her phone at the precinct rings, and a voice that sounds eerily familiar speaks to her, accented heavily.

“ _Is this Beth Childs?”_

“This is she,” Beth spins in her chair, picking up her notepad and pen, because they get weird calls all the time.

“ _You will get a folder, in the mail, that you must not let anyone see. There will be a burner phone there, too, to call me. My name is Katja. Call me when you get it.”_ She hangs up, and Beth blinks owlishly a few times, because while she’s been at the butt end of a few prank calls before, there’s never been anything like this before, and there’s a weight sitting at the pit of her stomach, a gut instinct telling her that this is _real_.

A folder shows up at her door that gives her more questions than answers, names and faces that look like her own, and an obnoxiously pink burner phone with only one number in it.

 _Katja_.

Beth inhales shakily because none of this makes sense, but there has always been a part of her that’s felt incomplete, parts of her life that haven’t added up, so she presses the button.

“ _Hello?”_

“This is Beth Childs,” she swallows, shakes her head, and steels herself, “talk.”

Her mother had called her stubborn.

Her father called her _brave_.

Beth doesn’t feel brave, sitting on the floor of her shower, letting the water pound over her head, the noise drowning out her thoughts, as she tries to process the information that has been thrust upon her. _Clones_.

Genetic identicals.

“What the literal fuck,” she whispers to herself, and she thinks she’s processing quite well for someone who’s just been told that there are copies of her scattered across the continent, because there aren’t exactly guidelines on how to react to these sorts of things.

There were articles on the internet on how to process grief, how to reach out to your soulmate, how to tie shoes and apply for college, but there were no articles on the internet on how to react to the news that you were a clone.

(She checked.)

It’s all too much to handle, and Beth feels like she’s spinning, like her world has been turned off-kilter, like she’s drowning, sitting there on her shower floor, and she wallows there for a long moment before the familiar pressure on her left hand pulls her out of her stupor.

She’s a detective, she can damn well figure some things out.

Raj has a crush on her―he’s sweet, really, his soulmate’s lucky, whoever they are―so it’s easy to sweet-talk her way to facial recognition programs, inputting her own face, because even though Katja has been very thorough with her evidence, there’s still a part of Beth that doesn’t believe, needs to see it for herself.

Beth almost laughs when the results begin to flood in, because _god_ there are so many, just within the United States and Canada alone.

Alison Hendrix, Scarborough, that’s local, and _jesus_ is that what Beth would look like if she married Paul and left the force? A _soccer mom_ Beth.

Cosima Niehaus, in California, scientist, working her way to her PhD. She has dreads and thick glasses and Beth wonders how, if they’re genetic identicals, Cosima’s vision is worse than theirs, because Beth’s always had perfect vision.

Jennifer Fitzsimmons, a high school teacher and swim coach. Beth took swimming lessons, once, when she was younger, had swallowed a lung-full of chlorine water and promptly sworn off the sport while her father laughed raucously.   

Rachel Duncan, Toronto. There’s nothing much about her other than the fact that she works at an institute called DYAD that Beth files away for further research, and then she keeps scanning. Krystal Goderitch, a beautician, and a recent petition for a name change pops up, revealing Tony Sawicki.

So many versions of Beth, staring back at her, and Beth suddenly feels very dizzy.

Sarah Manning.

This one has a handful of arrests, a criminal record, and Beth’s eyes widen a fraction under _list of known associates_ , because there, staring back at her, is Victor Schmidt’s name. Out of all of these copies, Beth feels immediately most connected to her, to Sarah, because somehow they’re caught up in the same mess, but doesn’t dig any further.

“ _Someone is killing us,”_ Katja tells her, and Beth sinks further into herself, because of course someone is trying to kill them, her life can never be easy. Katja produces a list of dead European clones for her as proof, and suddenly Beth is working on a second case on top of the Pouchy case, except this one has her life on the line, and the lives of countless others.

“Why did you contact me?” she asks Katja, helplessly, when she’s so caught up in the weight of it all that she feels like she’s being crushed.

“ _You are a detective,”_ Katja answers, as though it is obvious, “ _you have resources. And…”_ she trails off, suddenly unsure, “ _you seem like the sort of person to help, no matter what, Beth Childs.”_

Beth contacts Cosima and Alison first, because they’re the most useful in the scheme of things, because Katja is sick, because Jennifer _was_ sick, because even though they’re being killed off they’re all dying already, and Alison has money, and she does all of this on a little pink burner phone, somehow managing to avoid the watchful eye of Paul that now seems _too_ clinical, and maybe it’s the pills and maybe it’s the stress but Beth’s more on edge around him now than she’s ever been.

He was meant to be something to make things _easy,_ but he only ever seems to make things more complicated.

Beth shoots a woman who calls her an _abomination_ and tells Art it was an accident, blames it on the pills, and falls further into herself.

Beth sticks her noses in places where it doesn’t belong, in the crazy science of Neolution and Evie Cho and Susan Duncan, their creator, back from the dead. She learns about monitors and almost shoots her boyfriend, someone she’s never really loved, but stops herself, hands shaking.

M.K. finds her when she’s breaking. She calls her _Mika_ , with such fondness. Beth never says it outloud, but Mika reminds her of the soulmate she’s never met, because Mika is a survivor, and she’s so strong, stronger than Beth could ever be, and Beth is _breaking_ and she doesn’t want to.

 _I’m sorry,_ she wants to scream, as her chest is caving in on itself, _I know that I promise you I would never leave, but I can’t handle it all_.

“Watch the others for me,” she tells Mika, because Beth’s never been good at goodbyes, and she sets off to the train station, set on one final journey. As she walks, heels clicking, she cries, emptiness and despair clawing at her chest, tearing her apart.

 _I tried to be strong_ , she tells the universe. She doesn’t know if she’s talking to herself, or her soulmate, or her father. _I tried so hard._ She wanted to help people, for so long, but she can’t help people when she can’t even help herself.

She takes off her shoes, and sets down her bag, and breathes, stepping forward.

There’s a desperate, sharp pressure on her left hand, and when she turns, there’s a girl with her face staring back at her, tear stains marking her own cheeks, left hand almost mangled in the grip of her right, and Beth is already breaking but when she sees her, this missing piece that she’s been searching for her entire life, she collapses into her arms and sobs, letting the motion wrack her entire body.

She knows the pain is mirrored in the other girl’s form, but here, in her, in _Sarah’s_ arms―it’s so good to finally have a name to the feeling―Beth can feel the parts of herself slowly being pieced back together.

She’s not okay, nowhere remotely near that point, but she thinks she might be, eventually.

Sarah takes her to a loft in a part of town Beth would normally never visit outside of in the cop car, tucks her into a bed that is not her own and grasps her hands in her own as she holds her, and all Beth can think is that being in Sarah’s arms feels right.

(Later, they will have many things to talk about. Sarah will have stories of foster parents who cared too little and foster parents who were too harsh, of Siobhan and Felix, of Kira and drugs and abusive boyfriends. Beth will have stories of her father and Art and Katja and Mika and Cosima and Alison and _clones_ , of the pain clawing at her chest and how she’s trying hard to be better, but how being the protector to everyone overwhelms her, sometimes.)

(Later, they will have a hearing to figure out and a disease to cure and someone killing them to find, and countless misadventures.)

Right now, Beth lets herself be held in Sarah’s arms, heartbeat in sync with Sarah’s own, and thinks that it’s nice to be the one being protected, for a change.

 _I found you_ , she whispers to the universe, squeezing Sarah’s hand experimentally, as though she still doesn’t believe it’s there.

 _I’m here_ , Sarah seems to whisper back, wrapping her arms around Beth tighter, resting her head in the space between Beth’s neck and her shoulder, breathing in her scent and reassuring herself with the fact that Beth is there, in her arms, alive, heart beating. _You found me_.

 _I’m never letting you go_ , it’s a promise, both to Sarah, the universe, and herself, and Beth knows that whatever gets thrown their way, as long as she has Sarah, and Sarah has her, and their hands are linked together, things will end up alright.   

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to Ray and Norma for reading this as I wrote it and screaming at the different parts. I hope you enjoyed! Thanks for reading! Comments and kudos are greatly appreciated :) I may make a second chapter from Sarah's point of view depending on the response to this bit. 
> 
> Feel free to prompt me on my tumblr, danaryas, or check out my other fics on my other ao3, sam_kom_trashkru.
> 
> Have a lovely day/night/week <3


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